Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Olympics - The Good Old Days

I really like watching the olympics, both winter and summer.My favorite events in the Winter Olympics are the slalom skiing and the snowboarding events and hockey. The USA-Canada match yesterday was great; I have to say though that I would still like to see Canada get the gold on their home soil this year.

I found this article on wired.com, about some of the events which were held in the past in the olympics, but have since been discontinued:

The 1900 summer games included a swimming obstacle race with things like fences and boats for the competitors to navigate. Sadly, this event was never seen again at the Olympics, along with equestrian long jump and two-day cricket. It would be too awesome to watch Michael Phelps climbing out of the water to jump off a platform and then dive under a string of floating barrels.

That would be awesome! I would watch a swimming obstacle race or a horse long jump any day instead of ice dancing /*barf*

Another highlight was the first Olympic medal won by a person of African descent when Constantin Henriquez de Zubiera won a silver in the tug of war.

Tug of war? That is awesome. That is a sport that truly divides the men from the boys - even though it is usually played during recess...

The 1924 Olympics saw the first use of a 50-meter-long pool with marked lanes for races. In gymnastics, 23 men were awarded a perfect 10 in the rope-climbing event, which has since been discontinued.

Rope climb! It is like 8th grade gym class on a world-class competitive level! That is awesome. And all those guys got a perfect 10 - wow, we just don't have athletes these days like we used to!

I wouldn't mind seeing some of these events come back. They seem a lot more interesting than synchronized swimming or curling. Here's to the Olympics returning to their roots!